HCI and Usability Engineering COMP6390

Course overview

Course description

This course will provide an introduction to the field of Human Computer Interaction and will introduce students to behavioural research methods and techniques used in usability testing. Some of these techniques will involve a consideration of elementary statistics. The course will give students the essential theoretical background to approaches, methods and techniques followed by practical experience in conducting usability studies for interactive systems, with a special focus on 3D and Virtual Reality applications. Aspects of professional practice in integrating usability testing with the software development cycle will be considered.

Textbooks

Norman, Donald The Design of Everyday Things London/New York: MIT Press, 2000. (Required reading)

A list of other reference books will be given at the start of the course.

Workload

Two two-hour lecture blocks and one one-hour tutorial per week.